There enough to pity on both sides. Zimmerman doesn’t sound like the sharpest knife in drawer. The kind of guy who believes what reads in cereal boxes. I never really felt for Trayvon until I saw the Drudge picture of him wearing the grillz. The gold teeth — dental jewelry — probably of the kind you can buy for $19.95.

There is something inexpressibly sad about a 17 year old guy whose idea of flair is grillz. It’s like cheap hair cream and costume jewelry, a confession of innocence within a package of malice. I have a son of about the same age and even though he’s accounted smart and though perhaps I was myself accounted smart at that age, what does a man know at 17? Enough to hurt somebody else. And maybe he would have become some kind of thug, and maybe he would have turned away and maybe joined the Marine Corps or something, but nobody will know that now.

On the level of individual human beings the thing was a tragedy for both. And I, for one, am glad I don’t have to judge one man or the other. That’s what judges and juries do best.

But the whole media food fight went on without needing to refer to details. This entire brouhaha happened on the level of narrative, myth, kuryente — whatever you want to call it. Everybody already knew what they needed to know.

The whole thing will die down in a couple of weeks and Trayvon will still be dead. Maybe Al Sharpton will have a few more bucks in his pocket. What will he do with it, what does a man like that do with money anyway? Other than that, the world will keep on turning as though it never happened.

How has humanity made it this far, I wonder? And for that I don’t really need to look as far Trayvon or Zimmerman. Sometimes I only have to look as far as my own heart. But I remember that for reasons that escape me, all the great religions hold that we are not a lost cause. There must be some good in us, I guess, but as Michael Shaara once wrote, “if man is angel, then he’s a killer angel”.